Malaysia Expects Annual Solid Biomass Production to increase to 100 million tonnes

Malaysia’s biomass industry prospects seem bright. It’s expected that the South East Asian country will produce as much as 100 million dry metric tonnes of solid biomass on an annual basis – mainly from its palm oil sector.

The government has introduced the National Biomass Strategy 2020 that is anticipated to attract investments worth RM25 billion and reduce CO2 emissions by 12% by 2020. The country is also expected to focus on value-added downstream activities, particularly bioenergy, biofuels, biochemical and its end products.

Two of the country’s palm oil hubs – Sabah and Sarawak have immense potential to produce biomass products as it accounts for over 50% of Malaysia’s palm oil acreage.

Currently, Malaysia exports its biomass products to China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and European countries.

The demand is further growing on account of new biomass fired plants in these countries. In fact companies from South Korea and Japan are eyeing long-term biomass supply from Malaysia to fuel their power plants.